Dracula
Vampires are hot right now. Sexy, sexy vampires. So this week we decided to talk about Bram Stoker’s Dracula. We’re kicking it old school with the Count and his band of noble adversaries. Check out the podcast where we discuss the diverse and interesting cast of the book, sexism, and a very interesting modern screen adaptation of this frequently movie-ized classic. So strap on your man-brain and prepare to find out how much Dracula sucks. Blood, that is.
This week’s musical selection is “Sortie (Le Vent De l’Espirit)” by the great Olivier Messiaen. It’s a tad anachronistic, but what self respecting, centuries old, avatar of evil doesn’t want some creepy organ music in the background?
Novel Ideas 
April 18, 2012 at 11:44 am
Why has no one made this into a twitter thing? (Or have they?) It sounds like it was written for twitter. You could make different accounts for all the characters and they could tweet about all the mundane things in thier lives. Also, all the men could tag each other in tweets and leave the woman out of the loop. IT WOULD BE AWESOME! I might have to do this actually. Just kidding, I just found where someone already did: https://twitter.com/#!/draculabites It could be done better maybe?
Sorry for my stream of conscious post.
Maria
April 19, 2012 at 2:25 pm
I do have a question for you both. As you correctly point out, Stoker did not create the myth of the vampire, nor was he the first to write about nosferatu in English, that was John William Polidori, a friend of Mary Shelley, Percy, and Byron. Moreover, the story is not all that well written. So why do you suppose it is still the quinessential vampire story that most modern writers of vampires turn to?
April 19, 2012 at 3:47 pm
I heard an old folk tale that one of the main sources of vampire lore comes from Grave Robbers who would report that the finger nails and hair continued to grow after death so they assumed the person was getting up and drinking blood. Also apparently burring people alive by accident use to be a serious problem. It even led to this patents of “Safety Coffins” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_coffin
April 20, 2012 at 1:53 pm
@snoddie – I’ve read that they used to accidentally bury people because they ate off of lead based plates, and people would get lead posioning and go unconscious for a couple of days – leading others to believe they had died. I don’t think the safety coffin thing every saved anyone though because once you are burried there is only a finite amount of oxygen down there with you and its not enough to keep you alive for very long.